Why and How we worry
Worry is what happens when you constantly compare yourself against external frames of reference and continuously chatter to yourself about it. Over time, this sets in as your mental makeup. Your very mental make-up becomes worry.
You will think:
Am I doing as well as my neighbours?
How can I impress my boss?
What will my children think?
All the time, we need to get approval from others – whether it is family or work or society. This is a major portion of our worry. Our whole life is nothing but a process of collecting certificates from others. If others don't keep giving us certificates like Good
Husband, Good Employee, Good Neighbour, we worry that our life has become worthless. We form our personality only from others' certificates. We have all stopped trusting ourselves; that is the problem.
As a child, each of us is strongly centered in our own being. Have you ever seen any child worrying about what people will think of him? No! A child is beautiful because he has no worries. He is not worried about what others will say about him.
As we grow up, society teaches us to evaluate ourselves by the ideas and opinions of others. Society makes us dependent on external support, certificates from others, for each of our actions and words. This is why we are all the time worried about what others will say about us.
Also, when you worry about something, you feel you have a definite point of reference against which to run your life. That is why worrying gives a direction to your life. Without worry, you feel as if you have no axis about which to move. And so you actually nurture your worries.
When you worry about something, you feel you have a definite point of reference against which to run your life.
Let me tell you a small story:
Three men were sitting abandoned on an island.
They did not know for how many years they had been there.
Suddenly, one of them found a bottle and picked it up.
He rubbed his hands over it, and suddenly a genie appeared out of it.
They were shocked.
The genie told them, 'Thank you for freeing me from this bottle. Each of you may ask for a wish and I will grant it for you.'
They were very excited and they thought for a while.
The first man said, 'I want to marry my girlfriend and live happily.'
The genie said, 'Alright, your wish will come true.'
The first man disappeared from the island and the genie looked at the second man.
The second man said, 'I want to become a wealthy businessman.'
The genie said, 'Alright, your wish will be granted.'
The second man disappeared and the genie asked the third man what he wanted.
The third man said, 'I am going to miss my two friends who have been with me all these years. I want to be with them!' The genie said, 'Alright,' and it disappeared, leaving the three men just as they had been on the abandoned island!
The third was actually attached to his worry which is being marooned in the island! This is what I mean when I say we are so fond of our worries! We claim that they give us misery but we are so attached to them.
People come to me and say, 'Swamiji, my business is going from bad to worse. Last month I suffered heavy losses and the next month I know it's going to be even worse.'
I ask them, 'If you already know that, why don't you close down your business right away? Why should you suffer?'
But they are shocked. They ask in disbelief, 'What are you saying, Swamiji? What will I do then?'
The moment I give a solution for your worry, you are shaken because without a reason to worry, your ego loses its reason for existence! That is why you choose to remain in the dimension of worry.
When you are in worry, you feel you are someone. You feel solid.
Whereas, when you are free from worrying, you are in bliss, but in this dimension you are nobody! There is no material to keep you occupied. There is nothing to solve. You feel insecure, like a nonentity. That is why I tell you, to enjoy a worry-less state, you need to first drop your ego about wanting to be a solid entity.
And the thing about worrying is, first of all, worry itself is your decision to give food to the mind and keep it occupied. On top of this, each person thinks that only he has got a lot of worries and that only he is unhappy, and everyone else is very happy! But the strange thing is, every one thinks this way! How is this possible?
A small story:
In a certain kingdom, it came to the king's notice that everybody in his kingdom was depressed, because each person felt that they had the maximum worries, To enjoy a worry-less state, you need to first drop your ego about wanting to be a solid entity. and no one else had any such worries. So the king announced a 'Worry Exchange Offer', where people could bring in their big worries, and exchange them for someone else's small worries.
A big space was made ready, and in the center of it a huge 'worry pot' was placed. Anybody who wanted, could come and dump his own worries inside it, and pick up any other worries they wanted.
The only thing was, they had to pick up some worries.
The whole kingdom gathered for the event. The people moved around and met each other and started talking to each other about their worries.
After a long time, the event was declared open for the worry exchange.
A lot of time passed and not a single person came forward to drop their worries in the pot.
The kings asked his ministers what was happening.
The ministers replied, 'Your majesty, after all that interaction, everyone thinks that their own familiar small worries are much better than everyone else's worries!'
If we get down to the bottom of our so-called worries, we will understand that we are simply magnifying things that are not so bad at all. We simply talk in the air without getting down to the actual facts. If we get down to the facts, it will be not even 1/10th of what you worry about.